


Impasse (For The Jugular)

by ScratchTheMaven



Category: Marvel, Marvel 616
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Enemy Mine - Freeform, F/M, Gen, SHIELD as the enemy, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-04 05:04:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4126404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScratchTheMaven/pseuds/ScratchTheMaven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years after the events of Widow Hunt, Bucky finds himself working for SHIELD when a mission gone wrong and the emergence of a mutual enemy leads to a tentative agreement.</p><p>(Set after Latour's run. Bucky doesn't go to space. Bucky doesn't quite play by SHIELD's rules. Bucky is generally a mess.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impasse (For The Jugular)

_"They ain’t everything, but first impressions say a lot."_

His old man used to tell him that. So often that all Bucky could do was roll his eyes and nod. Yeah, sure. Of course they do.

His own blood is in his mouth and his left forearm pressed against her throat, the pressure bound to crush her trachea if not for the sudden, blinding pain of electricity shooting through his body, the sharp blue crackle of it audible past his own cry of pain. Bucky pulls a knife, aimed for the side of her neck and blocked with a last-minute hand.

They’ll kill each other.

He doesn’t know why she’s here. Hardly knows _her_. He only has the few, brief times Natasha’s mentioned her and even briefer interactions years, _decades_ , ago to go by. Yelena Belova. He scrapes the bottom of his brain, tries to think of some reason why she'd be here, why she'd be after _him_ , but comes up empty handed, senseless solutions. She’s out of the business, from what he knows, but her uniform says otherwise.

~~He hates her for wearing it.~~

“ _zzkt_ …This is Hill— _zzkt_ —come in.”

Bucky casts a glance to his tossed aside comm, Maria’s voice crackling through the damage it sustained in the fight. The look takes only a second, but it’s a second too long. Abandoning the attempt to push his forearm off her throat, she grabs his fallen pistol and smashes it against his skull, hard enough for her to throw him off, blood running down the side of his face.

“Ты меня разочаровал. Я от тебя ожидала чего-то более впечатляющего.”

The words warrant a glare, but it falters when he sees that she’s aimed the pistol in his direction, its trajectory burning right between his eyes.

“This is— _zzkt_ —Director Hill. Winter Soldier, respond.”

He lets himself think that Maria’s voice sounds concerned (though he’s sure she’s just furious that he hasn’t responded yet). She’d made herself clear when he’d returned to S.H.I.E.L.D. – play by the rules or suffer the consequences. No off-the-grid, no reckless perusal of a target when ordered to stand down - no Textbook Bucky Behavior, as she’d put it. It wasn’t like they got along well enough for him to happily accept the terms of his employment, but Bucky wasn’t one to let a no-nonsense approach go unappreciated. Besides, it’d either been rejoin S.H.I.E.L.D. or continue tracking down old nightmares, apologizing for horrors committed against his will until one of the skeletons in his closet decided to drag him down with it. Fury had made that much clear.

He won’t hear the end of this, if he survives to tell it.

A laugh escapes him, soft and hushed, as he holds up a hand as if to stay the shot Belova clearly intends to take, watches as her finger slides to hug to trigger. “If you’ve come here to sabotage my mission, congratulations, you won. My target’s long gone by now.”

He knows he shouldn’t provoke her. She’s a Widow - or something close to it. Fierce. Visceral. The kind of weapon that turns in his hands to stab him in the heart, slit his throat when he’s least expecting. He’d sharpened similar blades before.

She gives him a pointed look and steadies her aim. “Does it look like that’s all I’ve come to do?”

He decides that’s a question best left unanswered.

Bucky’s leg sweeps out, because if she’s going to spray his brain matter against the concrete roof, he’s going out fighting. Heart hammering and daring to hope his guess about the gun in her hands is—

_Click_

Relief, jolted and sharp, rattles through him, a millisecond, before he pulls a flash-bang grenade from his belt, frees the pin, and rolls it towards her. Belova throws the gun to the side and tosses a circular disk his way as she turns to retreat, putting more distance between her and the explosive than _him_ and the explosive when it goes off. Disoriented and frazzled, disk wreaking havoc on his arm (he imagines feeling the circuitry fail before he rips it off), he pulls a knife from his thigh holster, aims, and throws it at her back. He thinks he sees it hit. Off-center, shoulder blade. Damnably survivable.

He wants to fall back on the ground, just lie there a while until he regains some semblance of clarity. Inhale; reminder that he’s alive.

“—ecter Hill! Respond!”

His head lolls to the side, towards the comm’s dying cries. With a groan, Bucky rolls over, pushes himself to his feet enough to stumble over and snatch the device off the ground.

“Director Hill, this is Barnes. Ran into some resistance—”

His eyes fall to a small object on the ground, similar to the one he’s speaking into.

“Barnes?”

He moves – slow, bruised and sore more than he’s aware – towards the fallen communicator, examines it in his hands. It’s not SHIELD’s tech, but it’s similar enough for him to wonder if its design came from a similar origin.

_“Bar—”_

“Mission’s a bust,” he says at last, voice distant, brain working in overdrive as he looks at Belova’s seemingly abandoned comm.

There’s a frazzle of silence as he holds down the radio button of his own device, waiting for Hill’s response. He’s about to repeat himself, thinking that the message hadn’t gone through, tech too damaged to function, when her voice crackles back at him.

“What sort of resistance?”

Bucky pockets the spy’s communicator. He’s brief, any details saved for later. “An opposing operative. My target wasn’t even here. Neither were the weapons.”

“ _Zzkt_ – And the other operative?”

“Injured—” as if on cue, he winces, bending down to collect the gun Belova had thrown aside. “Escaped.”

“Get back to base.” To the untrained ear, she sounds indifferent, but Bucky can hear the frustration in her voice. “And _watch_ yourself.”

Ah, there it is.

“I try to.”

Maria doesn’t deem his assurances worthy of a response and he's met with the sound of flat static. Disconnected. He swears and tosses it to the side. He’s going to need a new one anyway.

****

He leaves the briefing room with a dossier and Commander Carter in stride. He can feel her eyeing him, like a lit match burning its way up his spine and into his brain.

“You’re sure you didn’t recognize her?”

“I’m sure.” Bucky doesn’t miss a beat, lying with each footstep for reasons even he’s unsure of. “Clearly female, but her face was covered. Why? Trying to say I'm old enough to know everyone in the business?"

She ignores his joke, but there's the slightest hint of a smile on her face as she asks, “And the mission?”

Fury had been the only reason he let himself be taken back under SHIELD’s payroll. After the Tarasova incident, his options were slim: come back employed or end up on their radar. Torn between being SHIELD’s asset and being on Fury’s leash isn’t always the most comfortable place to be, but it’s better than the alternative. And with the detailed documentation Cold War weapons’ caches tucked under his arm, he’s thinking he’ll let the old man win their next card game.

“Clear as crystal,” he says, looking her way with the slightest tug of a grin.

“I know Hill’s short with you, but she’s—”

“Infuriated at the flip of a mission, yeah.”

Sharon finally smiles, a little amused, a little taut – as if debating on chastising him for interrupting her. “Something like that.”

“I was caught off guard,” he admits, watching the tile squares as they walk. He should have known something had gone south when his target hadn’t made an appearance. “It won’t happen again.”

“I’m sure.”

****

The Brooklyn apartment he now calls home is as cramped as any in New York City. Despite its size (or lack thereof), it feels as spacious as Steve’s old place had been. There’s little to no furniture; a small couch, a small television set, a small coffee table set between the two. A coat rack hangs on the wall, a circular, one-person dining table in the corner across from it. The bedroom consists of a twin sized mattress and frame and a closet containing a decidedly scant amount of clothing. The fridge is mostly empty, a few bottles of beer he hasn’t gotten around to drinking, cheese, milk, eggs. There’s a half-used loaf of bread on the counter next to a toaster. Steve’s place never felt like a containment ward, closed in and barren. Lonely.

He guesses there’s small comfort in the fact that this one hasn’t burnt to the ground.

Bucky tosses the file onto the table, some of the papers scattering outwards from the edges of the manila folder, and hangs his bag (filled with the neatly folded heap of his uniform) on the coat rack. His assigned mission means little to him right now, but the scavenged communicator in his pocket does. He digs it out, turns the device over in his palm. It looks intact, unscathed from their fight with the exception of a few dents and scratches he thinks might be old battle wounds. He doesn’t switch it on, neither banking on the sound of static to greet him or wanting there to be a voice on the other end, and walks into the kitchen to grab a small screwdriver from a drawer filled with various junk (clips for opened bags of snacks, loose screws whose origin he can’t recall, scissors, pliers, a box of ammo, several candles he kept from an overloaded birthday cake - better days). Carefully, he unscrews the backing and pulls the thin, rectangular chip away from the rest of its innards. All of the SHIELD's devices are outfitted with GPS tracking counter measures. On one hand, a warm gesture, a way to find agents taken and held against their will, an assurance in crises – or a way to keep tabs on assets whose loyalty or commitment could be questionable. People like him, who SHIELD preferred to be a neatly placed dot on a worldview grid, in sight and maintained.

He tries not to let that bother him.

The technology powering the memory chip works in a way that allows _SHIELD_ access but not intruders, another means to protect agents who might have their gear stolen on a mission. He’s not the best by any means when it comes to bypassing digital security but he knows enough to get by, enough to _get in_ , to track the device's last few locations. Powering up the tablet he rarely uses, he fumbles through code and script until his efforts bypass the implanted firewall and open the tracking program. Bucky runs a hand over his face, as if to pull lingering exhaustion from his body, as he watches the digitized map pinpoint various locations, some more heavily saturated than others. Paris. Bosnia. Kiev’s dot is the faintest of all while the numerous locations across Cuba and Manhattan are like blood droplets against the screen.

He stares at the screen, studying the amount of time spent in each location, picking at patterns and possibilities until he has a pretty good idea of her movements. He removes the chip, powers down the tablet. The silence engulfs the apartment, seems to engulf _him_. Most nights he sleeps with the television on just to break through the miasma of it.

He could go after her, the temptation snaking its way up his spine like vines crawling up brickwork. And just as ruining. Chasing after Belova meant openly acknowledging an outright lie to the Director of SHIELD and there weren’t many people who could get away with lying to Maria Hill – not without consequence. He definitely isn't one of them. More than worrying over the outcome of that hitch is the chance of being set up for a trap. There’s not a shred of doubt in his mind that if he hadn’t been able to fend her off earlier, Hill would be contacting Steve with plans for his funeral. It would only make sense for her to create the opportunity to finish what she started.

Bucky scoffs, a sound caught in the back of his throat, as he snaps the memory chip in half and drops its fragments in the trash bin.

He's learned better from the last trap he’d fallen for.

****

Mission prep is routine. It’s the cleaned and oiled barrels of guns and the _schikt_ of sharpened blades against whetstone. It’s stocking up on ammunition, on grenades and smoke bombs, stocking up on the things needed when bullets and explosives fell amiss or the other guy hit you first and hit you hard enough to keep you down. It’s maps and extraction points and backup plans, time frames and threat levels.

Everything that follows is either sheer dumb luck or strained skills.

Most SHIELD agents see retrieval missions as standard, dull operations, as if being assigned one is a downgrade from ‘ _might get shot_ ’ to ‘ _definitely won’t get shot_ ’, like a higher risk factor designated their importance. Bucky knows better. Knows that if something’s important enough to be taken, it’s important enough to be protected from _being_ taken. So while usually fed into more blatant operations that complimented his skill set, Hill only sends those not prone to failure to collect SHIELD’s most coveted items. More often than not, that person ends up being him.

Without Avengers to oversee, or old friends that didn’t believe him to be years-long dead, he settles for it.

He steps past the bodies (dropped from a building away with three well-placed bullets, shots hardly echoing, recoil a gentle shove against his shoulder) that had been guarding the entrance to the warehouse and makes his way inside. It's spacious, hot, a light sweat breaking out over his skin beneath the weight of Kevlar and the various weapons he has strapped to his person. Large, rusted iron machinery stack against the walls and everywhere in between, misshapen and abandoned relics of the wars long gone by. The distinct sound of water dripping from a leak in the ceiling resonates throughout the floor, the smell of mold and mildew infiltrating the senses, dank and earthy. Allegedly, the weapons are stored a level below. Doubt slinks up from the floor, trying to drag Bucky with it, until he spots a door across the concrete room.

He takes about ten steps, just enough to get past some enormous piece of factory equipment he can’t name, before the metal of a pistol cracks against the back of his skull and his vision goes dark.

****

He’s pretty sure the throbbing in his head is what wakes him up. Persistent. Ruthless. Like someone gradually hammering a railroad spike through his skull just through his left temple. He shifts to move, has to stop as his head swims, but he _can_ move. He’s not restrained. Which is _stupid_ —

The sharp sting of a needle at his neck makes him hiss, jerking away from the sensation.

“You heal too fast for my liking.”

Borderline monotone, disinterest – _bored_. Reaching up to rub away the lingering smart from the injection, he glances towards the direction of the voice. A slow smirk defies Belova’s tone, a cat-ate-the-canary grin that reaches her eyes, visible now with the mask removed and set aside on a nearby table. He spots a bag beside it, the barrel of a gun sticking out from its side--  _his_  gun. _His weapons_. Bucky’s eyes drop to the gun in her hand.

“Just a precaution, really,” she says with a nod towards it. “I’ve been told you can be foolhardy.”

“What’d you shoot me up with?”

She shakes her head with a faint, huff of a laugh. “Nothing particularly lethal. More along the lines of a mild sedative, enough to keep you from doing anything you shouldn’t.”

But he doesn’t exactly like her wording, stubbornness urging him to get to his feet.

The blonde rolls her eyes. “The more you _move_ the more likely it _will_ kill you. But please, test your luck.”

He stills as if frozen before cautiously turning himself around to a sitting position, back against the wall. He can feel the drowsiness start to slither through his veins, into his heart and into his brain, slow like sludge. He’d been trained to resist a variety of drugs used in torture and interrogation, barbiturates and amphetamines so fondly used by the CIA in the 50s and 60s, hallucinogens used to break him down before he was dragged down dirty hallways and strapped into Department X’s mind altering machines. He can only hope Belova’s concoction falls under some category whose effects he could fend off.

“I tried to do things the easy way, but you wouldn’t take the bait.” Bucky only stares at her as she talks, eyes occasionally trailing the pistol when she gestures with the hand gripping it. He doesn’t say anything. Belova tilts her head like she's looking at a particularly sad animal. “Surely you’re not _that_ dim.”

Her expectant air shakes him from his silence. “The communicator. I know—was tempted to chase after you but thought better of it.” _Lot of good **that** did,_ he thinks. “Wanna’ explain why you tried to kill me the other week? Far as I know, I’ve done nothing to you.”

Belova scoffs, as if above attempted murder based on vindication or the fact that he of all people could actually _do_ anything to her. He thinks it might be the latter of the two. “You could call it a test.”

Something like anger sparks, warming his face and sending his heart into a staccato. “Well, I don’t care for tests—the hell do you want?”

She’s watching him closely now, calculating. “I want to make you an offer.”

“Sure as hell ain’t gonna’ say yes now,” he mutters, more to himself than to her. He isn’t one to be bribed and blackmailed into submission. If saying no to whatever she might propose means watching as she unloads a bullet into his head, then so be it.

“Oh, I think you will.” She stands and begins to pace, slow and casual, biting her lower lip as if preparing for a solid pitch. The so-called Widow might put forth a good effort in conveying herself as every inch and then some worthy of the title she holds, but it’s not quite enough for Bucky to overlook the minute cracks in an otherwise flawless disguise. She’s worried he’ll be a tough sell. “Nearly a year ago, SHIELD suffered a massive prison break. Much of it was swept under the rug simply because there was nothing your dear Director could do about it-- supposedly having more important things to deal with than escaped criminals. She has _Avengers_ for that.”

Her last sentence is laced with undertones of mockery, but her disdain is not what causes Bucky to frown. “…Does this have anything to do with the Tarasova incident?”

She shrugs a shoulder, turning away from him slightly to mess with a stack of papers on the table near her mask. “Only in origin.”

Tesla Tarasova's Tesseract had caused quite an uproar within SHIELD. Exposed undercover agents unleashed hell upon their assignments, killing men and women who perhaps deserved to meet their end but whom SHIELD relied on in order to track the more widespread movements of their organizations; HYDRA, AIM, Chaos. Nuclear launch codes sold or changed or, worse, activated, spreading panic among civilians and heroes alike. So he thinks, yeah, maybe SHIELD _did_ have more important concerns than runaway prisoners.

Still, he's doubtful as he says, “I never heard anything about a jail break.”

“You wouldn’t.”

She tosses a black binder onto the floor, sliding to a halt in front of him, and leans against the wall, crossing her arms and providing the illusion of nonchalance. Keeping his eyes locked on her and the gun still only a quick aim’s away from being pointed at him, he reaches out and grabs the folder, head and stomach lurching at the movement. There’s nothing that really catches his eye, columns and columns of inmates names and photographs, seemingly endless lists of crimes and sentences that the drugs swimming through his system hinder him from caring to pay attention to.

“What—?”

His blood runs cold, pausing on a face that grins back at him. Manic. Something close to bile tightens his throat.

“Some of the prisoners were killed in the attempted escape. _He_ killed more people on his way out than SHIELD’s guards did trying to keep people _in_.”

Bucky opens his mouth to speak but nothing comes out. Cotton mouth – from the injection or Leonid Novokov’s smirking mugshot, he isn’t entirely sure or inclined to care.

“You see, I was running a particular business excursion a few months ago that brought our friend here to my attention. He’s put quite a damper on my work—”

“What exactly _is it_ that you do these days?” he asks, scathing timbre bleeding into the words from the fury boiling at Novokov’s escape. A year. An entire year with him on the run again.  _Why hadn’t he been informed?_

“Nothing anymore. Technically, I’m dead.” While spoken with dispassion, he can hear the underlying bitterness. Dead. That’s new. He wants to ask ( _how?)_ but she talks over the opportunity to do so. “I’m assuming you didn’t tell SHIELD about our little run-in? It would have been quite awkward if you started claiming to have seen some dead spy.”

“Awkward for you or for me?” His voice sounds cracked, parched, like he hasn’t had a drink in days. He’s really starting to question the benign nature of this drug.

She shrugs. “I suppose both, but that’s beside the point. We have a common enemy. I let you eliminate your opposition tonight so SHIELD won't think you're _entirely_ useless. When you leave here, you’ll explain to your handlers that you had to bunk down to avoid drawing unwanted attention to your extraction site.  Standard op. They’ll buy it.”

“And if I don’t?” he asks, a challenging lilt to his voice.

“Then someone will find you dead within the next twenty-four hours," she says, matter-of-fact. "Or more, depending on how much or little people care for you.”

An arid, wry sound leaves him. “I can vanish before then.”

Belova quirks an eyebrow. “You’re welcome to try.”

Bucky lets her threat roll off his shoulders. “...So I’m supposed to serve as, what? Your cloak and dagger?”

“That’s the idea, yes.” She stares down at her gun, fitted with a silencer, he realizes. He wonders which dead man in her collective history of dead men she stole it from. “You have SHIELD access, I don’t. And SHIELD access is something that’s unfortunately necessary for me to eliminate any possibility of your little rat interfering with my work again.”

 _Your rat_. He winces. Of course she’d know he’d trained Novokov, taught him everything that’s kept him alive through all this, provided him with the means to do what he did two years ago (two years without feeling at peace, without _her_ ). His words inch towards condescension as he says, “Surely you’re capable of finding him yourself. Why come to me?”

“Like you said, _милый мой_ — cloak and dagger. On record, I’m not alive. If I simply go after him, it’ll bring SHIELD's dogs nipping at my feet and their attention to the not-so-legal but oh-so-profitable aspects of my work.” She smiles, eyes flashing that dangerous glint again, daring him to pry further, before waving a hand, dismissive, like even explaining that much is a tedious waste of her time. “We both know how convenient death can be.”

“Speak for yourself.” Death had done him no favors. Not the first time and definitely not the second.

“Neither you or I have time to deal with your bitterness at the moment. What’s it going to be?”

That’s the question, isn’t it? Because he could walk out of here a liar, agree to be her scapegoat, go to the nearest safe house, and vanish, rid of her _and_ SHIELD. Because she’s wrong - becoming a ghost of a person is something that’s ingrained in the marrow of his bones, not just dropping off the map but burning the map itself. She wouldn’t find him, no one would. He could lie, report her to SHIELD, make more of an enemy of her than she already is, live on the run as they hunt each other down like wolves until one of them kills the other.

But he won’t do any of that. Because she doubts his will to save himself and she’s right – even if it means damning himself, her offer is too tempting.

With a small nod, the deal is struck.

“Good.” Belova pushes herself off the wall, watching him (no wariness, just an unsettling calm) as she takes the documents from his hand (he does _not_ flinch at her proximity). “I’ll be contacting you shortly with further details.”

“Right,” Bucky mutters, slowly forcing himself to his feet. It isn’t until he's standing that the effects of the drug really become noticeable. He feels _weak_. He barely manages to catch the heavy bag holding his weapons hostage as it's tossed in his direction. He opens it, checking its contents, counting knives and ammo clips.  Everything accounted for, he looks back to Belova, watches her pick up her mask, the gun still in her hand.

“Oh, and Barnes?”

“What?” he snaps.

“Tracking that communicator like you did—it works both ways. You don’t have the most _welcoming_ apartment, but the flooring is quite a lovely European walnut. I’d hate to bloody it.”

****

He doesn’t go to the hospital, sits and waits for SHIELD evac to pick him up from a safe house Sharon told him to go to. She didn’t sound particularly concerned when he radioed in to her, but she never let on about that sort of thing. As far as friends go, she’s the closest he has within SHIELD, a familiar face that’s not unkind, a certain shared respect between the two of them. Once SHIELD caught wind of his deception, she’d likely be leading the team to track him down. Sharon had only set aside her duty once before and he isn’t Steve; expecting similar leniency would be asinine.

Bucky lifts a panel from the blinds covering the front window with a finger, just enough to peer out of as he hears a van roll up, sees Sharon through the heavily tinted windows. He can barely stand, all the movement of getting here having exacerbated the drug in his system. It’s hard to breathe but he forces a pinched smile when Sharon enters the room, looking every inch displeased.

“You should have gone to a hospital, Barnes,” she says as she waves a hand for the medical team to invade his space with pokes and prods.

“I’ve taken worse hits.”

She frowns, as if wanting to state the obvious _(“That’s not an excuse”)_. Truth is, he told himself through the wait that if he died, so be it – just a sign that the choice he’s going to make is the wrong one.

But he knows that’s not how the world works.

Sharon heaves a sigh, part genuine exhaustion and part impatience. “Can you walk?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I can walk.” He’s not letting anyone drag or carry him to the van.

The ride is bumpy, jolting with every pothole and turn. It'd bother him less if not for the medical team, trying to work in the small movable space. Occasionally he glances at the faces around him, wary of his presence, his history, or ignoring _him_ in exchange for his blood results, nothing but another day on the job. At Sharon, focused on getting them to a SHIELD base. He wonders if she knows, a briefly entertained thought because of course she knows. She's SHIELD's second in command - there's not much she _doesn't_ know.

He thinks about what he's about to do, about Fury's words of caution, and wonders if one of his skeletons has finally come to lay him to rest.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a 616-based fic. If I accidentally slip up and reference some more MCU-ish things along the way, forgive me and pretend this is a blended universe heavily influenced by 616. Bear with me here.
> 
> Translations:  
> Ты меня разочаровал. Я от тебя ожидала чего-то более впечатляющего  
> "“You have disappointed me. I expected something more impressive from you.”
> 
> милый мой  
> "My dear."


End file.
